Tabula Rasa (30 page)

“Ah, not in this world.”

He made a shooing motion to Virana, who had edged toward him clutching a carrot she was supposed to be scraping and was pretending not to listen. When she was gone he said softly, “The spirits think he is dead?”

“He is all alone.” The woman clutched at her chest and put her head on one side. “He cries out, ‘Mother! Mother!’ ”

Conversation around them had stilled. People were turning round to watch. It was hard to know what to say next, except to tell her to go away and stop wasting his time with frightening nonsense. “How did he get to the next world?”

The woman placed her forefinger at an angle across her left eyebrow. “A terrible blow, Doctor. Even you could not save him. He fell crying out, ‘Mother! Mother!’ ”

“And when you heard him cry out—”

“My friend heard it,” she corrected him. “A friend who does not want to call up spirits. But for the sake of this boy and to help the Legion, she has bravely sacrificed a good black lamb and opened herself to their presence.”

“That’s very decent of her,” said Ruso. “Is there anything else she can tell you? Where the body is? Who did it?”

“Why do you not write this down?”

“I’ll remember it,” he promised.

The woman informed him very seriously that the culprit was a gray-haired centurion with the Sixth Legion and that the body lay under some trees on a hillside overlooking a beautiful river. No, the spirits knew neither what sort of trees nor which river. But the sun was shining.

He thanked her and proffered a final question. “When the spirits heard the boy calling out,” he said, “what were his exact words?”

The woman frowned. “ ‘Mother! Mother!’ ”

“I see. Thank you very much. That’s been very . . . interesting.” Especially the part about a native boy calling for his mother in Latin.

“The lamb was very costly.”

“Then it’s especially generous of your friend,” he said, drawing back and slapping his writing tablet shut. “Give her our thanks.”

“She has no money left.”

“She has our gratitude.”

“Hah!” The woman withdrew and spat on the floor. Someone at the next table called, “Never mind, missus. At least you got a free drink.”

The show was over. People were standing now, gathering up coats and bags and beginning to make their way out. Ria was grinning at him from the far corner. It was a grin that said she would not be asking for compensation, because if he wished to retain his wife’s lodgings, he would be paying for all the drinks and pastries.

He did not have long to dwell on this. On turning to pick up his notes, he was greeted by the sight of a large hand covering them. “My brother is still missing,” said Conn in his own tongue. He leaned across the counter, picked up Ruso’s cup, and sniffed the dregs.

Ruso felt his fists tighten.

“Are you going to look for him or sit here drinking fancy wine all day?”

He fought down the temptation to rearrange Conn’s nose. As calmly as he could manage, he said, “I have a list of ideas to follow up. Can your people deal with some of them?”

“We can deal with all of them.”

“I’ll pass them on in just a moment,” he said. “First we need to talk about my wife’s friend. The girl from Eboracum who works here.”

“What about her?”

“She’s been insulted.”

“Not by me.”

“You were there.”

Conn shrugged. “She’s a whore. We need to talk about my brother.”

“She’s been doing her best to help find your brother. You should go and thank her.”

Conn opened his mouth, failed to think of a response, and gave a derisive bark of laughter. It was not very convincing.

“When you’ve thanked her, we’ll talk about where he might be.”

The Briton’s eyes narrowed. “Your fancy officer said you had to help us.”

“She’s in the back room. Make it sincere.”

Conn lifted his hand and glanced down at the notes he could not read. Then he turned on his heel and strode toward the back of the bar.

Chapter 47

Tilla wished she had brought a second writing tablet. Her letters were always larger than she would like, and she struggled to keep them in line at the best of times. Now the wax of the tablet that had caused such amazement at the farm—a local-born woman who could write!—was scarred with stabs at names that she would have trouble reading back later. There were large smoothed patches too. One had been the name of the man who passed the rumor on to Virana, but who turned out to have heard it from his wife, who had already been named as a source by two of Enica’s friends—and so it went on, the story of the story looping round and tailing back and blundering into dead ends where the person they needed to see was somewhere else: visiting relatives, trading, or out helping with the search.

It took several tries before they realized they must explain at the beginning that Enica was not there to blame or accuse. She was offering concerned neighbors a chance to help by tracing the real source of the rumor before the child snatcher did. But the rumor had begun its journey several days ahead of them. It had already passed around hearths and over bar tables and market stalls and across boundary walls and even—how things had changed since her parents’ day!—between locals lazing in the bathhouses at forts farther along the wall.

The slave followed them around with no sign of cheering up or of understanding anything that was said in British, so they called him by his real name to his face and Dismal to each other. Tilla had tried explaining to him that if he heard a horn he was to say so, because it might be the signal that Branan had come home. “Or it might be a war horn,” added Tilla, irritated by his glum face and sullen speech. “The signal for our warriors to rise up and throw your masters back into the sea where they came from.” Even then there was no reaction. Perhaps he believed her.

Some of the people they met were suspicious of the military brands on the horses’ shoulders. For the same reason they were twice stopped and questioned by army patrols and had to appeal to Dismal to confirm that the horses were not stolen.

Enica said little as they rode along the lanes and down the narrow twisting tracks, except to call out for her son. Tilla doubted he was close enough to hear. While every stone wall, every wooded valley, every ditch or patch of reeds, could be concealing him, any thief with any common sense would have got him well clear of here long ago, knowing people would be searching. Still, Enica looked more alive now that she had gained some sort of purpose.

They left the shelter of the trees and turned left onto the main road with Tilla urging her horse on in front and the slave bringing up the rear. The wind was gusting in from the west, cooling their faces with a light drizzle. They cantered as far as the shortcut by the burned ash tree, where they had to slow again for the horses to pick their way along the stony ground. In the distance Tilla could make out the overgrown ruins of a farm that might have been abandoned by choice, or more likely during the troubles. She thought again about the conversation with Senecio at the fort earlier this morning.

The tune he had been singing was one she had learned from her mother: a very old song about the offering of one man in order to save a people. Not a murder, but a human life sacrificed in the way it had always been done: through the threefold death. She had crouched down beside him and joined in, very softly, with one hand on his arm. When it was over he murmured, “I am lacking in courage, child.”

“I do not think so.”

He shook his head. “My two older boys believed the gods were with us,” he said. “My boys believed it was the time to rise up. I told them yes, this is the time. Because that was what we wanted to believe.”

“Your boys were heroes.”

His laugh was bitter. “No matter how many you kill, the Romans still have more soldiers to send.”

“They have an empire. We are a scattering of tribes.”

“We showed them, though. For a while.”

“We did,” she agreed, wondering if he really believed the price had been worth it.

He said, “I will not lose another son to them.”

“Everyone is helping, Grandfather. Today I am taking Enica out looking.” She sensed he did not want a complicated explanation about rumors and sources.

He nodded slowly. “You have grown up well, Daughter of Lugh. Your mother would be proud.”

The words warmed her inside, even if she could not imagine Mam ever approving of her marrying a Roman. She wanted to hear them again, but a group of soldiers was marching past, and then while she was still repeating them in her mind she heard Senecio say, “It may be the only way to find Branan.”

The sky-blue eyes looked into her own. The warm feeling faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by a stillness, as if the gods had stopped their business to listen.

Tilla said, “The threefold death?”

“We must try everything else first,” he said. “But I will not lose another son to them.”

Senecio, who had wanted no more killing.

Tilla urged her shambling mount into a livelier walk. Surely the old man had not meant it? The threefold death was a thing of the past: something to sing about, not to do. Besides, how would he find a victim? Perhaps he had not thought of that. Worse, perhaps he had. Perhaps he already had someone in mind.

Holy Christos,
she prayed, because Christos was one of the gods who could listen anywhere,
let it not come to that. Help us find Branan before it comes to that.

“They are searching the hill,” Enica said, pointing.

A few hundred paces to the east, Tilla could make out eight or nine of their own people strung out across a slope of common land, forcing their way through tall bracken that nobody had harvested. Through the veil of drizzle she could see distant arms rise and fall as they beat a path. From time to time one of them would stop and crouch down for a better look at something. Tilla found she was holding her breath with each pause.
Find him. Find him now. Do not let the old man do something that will never be forgiven.
But every time, the searcher straightened up and moved ahead to keep in line with the others.

Tilla glanced across at Enica, who was no longer watching. Instead she cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted, “Branan! Branan, where are you? It’s Mam come for you!”

The piebald horse tossed its head at the sound, and the dying hedge brambles swayed in the breeze. The women rode on.

Of the few children they saw in the lanes and the fields, none were alone and several were seized by their mothers at the approach of strangers, the women showing everyone how fiercely they would defend their young if anyone came too close. A couple of children were armed with sticks.

Tilla had given up trying to argue with the people who told them the army had hidden Branan themselves as revenge for that wife beater being dangled upside down. Nobody suggested what Tilla privately thought more likely: that the boy’s disappearance might have something to do with a jealous older brother. When she asked whether it was possible that Branan might have been taken by a local person, Enica was both shocked and dismissive. Every parent they met was warning children to keep away from strangers. Especially soldiers.

Several people complained that children were no longer available to run errands or fetch water on their own. One father even wanted to know if he could claim compensation from the army if he had to put his sheep onto winter feed this early in the season. Watching far too many ewes trying to nibble the last blades of grass in a bare paddock, Tilla protested, “But there is grass still up on the common land. I have seen it.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed the father, as if she had just proved his point. “It’s no use to me up there, is it? Not if I can’t send the children out to shepherd. You go and ask your husband: Whose fault is that? The army’s!”

So far no one they spoke to had been approached by anyone else trying to track down the source of the rumor. Tilla was not sure whether this silence was good news or just a sign that they were on the wrong trail altogether. She said nothing of this to Enica, who seemed to be clinging as tightly to the hope of this search as she was to the saddle of the piebald horse every time it went faster than a walk. Tilla had wondered out loud if she should have asked for a cart instead, but Enica insisted she was fine: just a little out of practice. Indeed after a while she did seem to remember how not to bounce about uncontrollably during the trot.

By the end of the morning more names had been flattened back into the wax and others had been added. Three had lines drawn underneath them as well, to show they were boys of about Branan’s age. Two of them were brothers, so it made sense to visit them first.

According to Enica, the family of Lucano and Matto had lost their farm when the line for the wall was laid out. The army had moved them all to an abandoned homestead on poor land farther north. They were on the way there now, easing their way down a steep shortcut across a rocky stream. Tilla, riding in front, urged her horse to jump the tumbling water and scramble up the opposite bank between the trees. Dismal’s horse followed her own, leaping up the steep slope.